Blizzard Entertainment® (often shortened to "Blizzard" or "Blizz") is a video game developer & publisher that is responsible for the Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, and Overwatch franchises. The company originally concentrated primarily on the creation of game ports for other studios before beginning development of their own program with the development of games like Rock n' Roll Racing & The Lost Vikings.

In July 2008, Blizzard's parent company, Vivendi, merged their Vivendi Games subsidiary with Activision to create a new holding company called Activision Blizzard.[1][2] Five years later, in July 2013, Vivendi sold off most of its shares in Activision Blizzard, which now exists as an independent company.[3] As of October 2014, the company employs over 3,900 individuals.[4]

The small company initially did many "ports", converting games from one platform operating system to another, including board games (Battle Chess, Lexicross), strategy games (Castles), sports games (Amiga Baseball), and others (Dvorak Teaches Typing), though the company did become the first American developer to release a Super Nintendo title with RPM Racing, which became one of the first ten launch titles for the platform in North America.[11]

It was not until Interplay Entertainment and Silicon & Synapse collaborated on the SNES side-scroller The Lost Vikings that it's critical — though not commercial — breakthrough came. With some acclaim, the game hit the shelves in 1993. The game's release, along with Rock & Roll Racking (also 1993) led Nintendo to name the studio its "Developer of the Year". Tragically, the release of the two games coincided with the death of the 16-bit console market, and neither title sold well.[11]

In August 1995, the company moved from a 3,600 sq. ft. office in Costa Mesa to a 14,000 sq. ft. office in Irvine, CA.[6]

Facing a lack of success in the console market, and not willing to bet solely on one market, the company continued developing several 16-bit console titles while branching out by starting development on two new games: Games People Play, a crossword/word-game that was never completed, and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, whose development was led by its second employee and VP of Research & Development, Patrick Wyatt.[11]

The company temporarily re-branded itself as Chaos Studios and released the game Blackthorne under that studio name, but conflicts with an unregistered trademark for the name "Chaos" caused the company leadership to consider a new name. Upon acquisition by Davidson & Associates, then the #3 North American educational software publisher, in February 1994, the company changed its name to Blizzard Entertainment.[11]

Blizzard turned 20 years old in 2012. The history is recorded on a timeline on its own site here.[12] On February 8, 2016, Blizzard celebrated their 25th year anniversary with a video and continued to celebrate it along with the Diablo 20th anniversary at BlizzCon 2016.[13][14][15]

Blizzard North

Blizzard North was originally founded in 1993 as Condor Inc. by David Brevik, Erich Schaefer, and Max Schaefer. Blizzard North came out in January of 1995 with an idea pitched with Allen for Diablo.[17] The company was purchased and renamed later in March of 1996[7] and was the Bay Area division of Blizzard Entertainment, known for its Diablo series. The studio was originally based in Redwood City, California, before being moved a short distance away to San Mateo, California, with Blizzard proper being based in Irvine, southern California. On August 1, 2005, Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North with a key reason for the closure was Blizzard's North poor development of what was to be Diablo III, which didn't meet Vivendi's expectations. There was also a couple mentions of Blizzard South, which was known for the StarCraft and the Warcraft series. However, the name wasn't mentioned as much but it was used to keep confusion from Blizzard North as Blizzard South is based in Irvine, California, Blizzard's main location.

TeSPA partnership

In 2013, Blizzard announced an official partnership with TeSPA to provide licensed StarCraft, Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm in-game rewards to college gaming clubs.[18][19][20] In early 2014, TeSPA and Blizzard Entertainment hosted the $5,000 North American Collegiate Hearthstone Open series, culminating in a live grand finals event at the Twitch.tv stage at PAX East and PAX Prime.[21]

Teams

After the release of World of Warcraft, the company divided its development staff into numerically designated teams (e.g. Team 2 is the dev team for World of Warcraft), each team focusing on a specific project. While relatively small, each team is supported by a much larger cast of employees, as well as being overseen by other groups within the company.

In addition to the numerically designated teams, "strike teams" were formed, as a result of Chris Metzen's desire to keep the company's original culture intact. These teams are not assigned to any one project, but give feedback on separate projects. A "design council" also exists, a gathering of all of the game directors and lead designers throughout the company.[4] As of August 2017, most of Blizzard's development focus is on supporting its existing IPs, but is working on new IPs as well.[22] As of November 2018, Blizzard's current development model is to effectively have one team per IP and support indefinitely. As a team grows and reaches a certain size, elements of the team will be spun off to work on a new IP. Each team consists of around 100–300 people.[23]

Culture

Relationship with Activision Blizzard

On December 2, 2007, Vivendi (Blizzard Entertainment's parent company) announced that their subsidiary Vivendi Games (of which Blizzard Entertainment was a part) would be merging with Activision to form Activision Blizzard. The deal was finalized on July 8, 2008. Vivendi later divested themselves of Activision Blizzard in July 2013, and it now exists as an independent holding company.

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. remains Blizzard's brand,[26] as it and Activision continue to exist as separate entities within the Activision Blizzard umbrella.[27] Despite many players' fears, there have been no major changes in Blizzard's operations as a result of these business deals.

Conferences

Blizzard Entertainment has conferences for Blizzard announcements and demonstrations, known as the Blizzard Entertainment World Wide Invitational and BlizzCon. The first WWI was held in Seoul, South Korea on May 19 and 20, 2007 when Blizzard officially announced StarCraft II. Paris, France hosted the second Invitational on June 28 and 29, 2008.[28]

Titan was the project name for a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) that was being developed as a new IP. In September 2014, Blizzard co-founder and CEO, Mike Morhaime, confirmed with Polygon that the project had been cancelled.[54]

Untitled pirate-themed ARPG (cancelled after a year of development)[55]

Spike TV Video Game Awards 2011 - "Gamer God" - "Additional honors included the second ever Gamer God Award, which was bestowed upon Blizzard Entertainment, the creators of the "World of Warcraft," "Starcraft" and "Diablo" series. Original founders Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce were all on hand to accept the prestigious award."

Top Places To Work 2010 - Orange County Register

Top Places to Work 2009 - County Register

OC's Best Places to Work 2009 - Orange County Business Journal

Company of the Year 2009 - Technology Council

Top Places to Work 2008 - Orange County Register

OC Metro's Top Places to Work For 2008

German Award for Computergames

Best Multimedia Company of 1999 - SC Software Publishers Association

Best Software Developer of 1993 - VideoGames Magazine

Developer's Spotlight Award - Computer Game Developer's Association

Best Director of Animation: StarCraft - 1997 World Animation Celebration

Notes and trivia

Since their beginnings as a North American company focusing primarily on the English-speaking market, Blizzard has gone on to become a "global business".[4] As of 2014, more than half of its players are in Asia.[4]

According to Hearthstone's Senior Producer Yong Woo, Blizzard employees receive some of their bonus money in "Blizzard bucks", which can be spent on company products such as card packs.[60]

Gamepedia

Tools

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